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The forces of a dozen European nations burst into Russia.
The Russian army and people avoided a collision till Smolensk
was reached, and again from Smolensk to Borodino. The French army
pushed on to Moscow, its goal, its impetus ever increasing as
it neared its aim, just as the velocity of a falling body increases
as it approaches the earth. Behind it were seven hundred miles
of hunger-stricken, hostile country; ahead were a few dozen miles
separating it from its goal. Every soldier in Napoleon's army
felt this and the invasion moved on by its own momentum.
The more the Russian army retreated the more fiercely a spirit
of hatred of the enemy flared up, and while it retreated the army
increased and consolidated. At Borodino a collision took place.
Neither army was broken up, but the Russian army retreated immediately
after the collision as inevitably as a ball recoils after colliding
with another having a greater momentum, and with equal inevitability
the ball of invasion that had advanced with such momentum rolled
on for some distance, though the collision had deprived it of
all its force.
The Russians retreated eighty miles- to beyond Moscow- and
the French reached Moscow and there came to a standstill. For
five weeks after that there was not a single battle. The French
did not move. As a bleeding, mortally wounded animal licks its
wounds, they remained inert in Moscow for five weeks, and then
suddenly, with no fresh reason, fled back: they made a dash for
the Kaluga road, and (after a victory- for at Malo-Yaroslavets
the field of conflict again remained theirs) without undertaking
a single serious battle, they fled still more rapidly back to
Smolensk, beyond Smolensk, beyond the Berezina, beyond Vilna,
and farther still.
On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, Kutuzov and
the whole Russian army were convinced that the battle of Borodino
was a victory. Kutuzov reported so to the Emperor. He gave orders
to prepare for a fresh conflict to finish the enemy and did this
not to deceive anyone, but because he knew that the enemy was
beaten, as everyone who had taken part in the battle knew it.
But all that evening and next day reports came in one after
another of unheard-of losses, of the loss of half the army, and
a fresh battle proved physically impossible.
It was impossible to give battle before information had been
collected, the wounded gathered in, the supplies of ammunition
replenished, the slain reckoned up, new officers appointed to
replace those who had been killed, and before the men had had
food and sleep. And meanwhile, the very next morning after the
battle, the French army advanced of itself upon the Russians,
carried forward by the force of its own momentum now seemingly
increased in inverse proportion to the square of the distance
from its aim. Kutuzov's wish was to attack next day, and the whole
army desired to do so. But to make an attack the wish to do so
is not sufficient, there must also be a possibility of doing it,
and that possibility did not exist. It was impossible not to retreat
a day's march, and then in the same way it was impossible not
to retreat another and a third day's march, and at last, on the
first of September when the army drew near Moscow- despite the
strength of the feeling that had arisen in all ranks- the force
of circumstances compelled it to retire beyond Moscow. And the
troops retired one more, last, day's march, and abandoned Moscow
to the enemy.
For people accustomed to think that plans of campaign and
battles are made by generals- as any one of us sitting over a
map in his study may imagine how he would have arranged things
in this or that battle- the questions present themselves: Why
did Kutuzov during the retreat not do this or that? Why did he
not take up a position before reaching Fili? Why did he not retire
at once by the Kaluga road, abandoning Moscow? and so on. People
accustomed to think in that way forget, or do not know, the inevitable
conditions which always limit the activities of any commander
in chief. The activity of a commander in chief does not all resemble
the activity we imagine to ourselves when we sit at case in our
studies examining some campaign on the map, with a certain number
of troops on this and that side in a certain known locality, and
begin our plans from some given moment. A commander in chief is
never dealing with the beginning of any event- the position from
which we always contemplate it. The commander in chief is always
in the midst of a series of shifting events and so he never can
at any moment consider the whole import of an event that is occurring.
Moment by moment the event is imperceptibly shaping itself, and
at every moment of this continuous, uninterrupted shaping of events
the commander in chief is in the midst of a most complex play
of intrigues, worries, contingencies, authorities, projects, counsels,
threats, and deceptions and is continually obliged to reply to
innumerable questions addressed to him, which constantly conflict
with one another.
Learned military authorities quite seriously tell us that
Kutuzov should have moved his army to the Kaluga road long before
reaching Fili, and that somebody actually submitted such a proposal
to him. But a commander in chief, especially at a difficult moment,
has always before him not one proposal but dozens simultaneously.
And all these proposals, based on strategics and tactics, contradict
each other.
A commander in chief's business, it would seem, is simply
to choose one of these projects. But even that he cannot do. Events
and time do not wait. For instance, on the twenty-eighth it is
suggested to him to cross to the Kaluga road, but just then an
adjutant gallops up from Miloradovich asking whether he is to
engage the French or retire. An order must be given him at once,
that instant. And the order to retreat carries us past the turn
to the Kaluga road. And after the adjutant comes the commissary
general asking where the stores are to be taken, and the chief
of the hospitals asks where the wounded are to go, and a courier
from Petersburg brings a letter from the sovereign which does
not admit of the possibility of abandoning Moscow, and the commander
in chief's rival, the man who is undermining him (and there are
always not merely one but several such), presents a new project
diametrically opposed to that of turning to the Kaluga road, and
the commander in chief himself needs sleep and refreshment to
maintain his energy and a respectable general who has been overlooked
in the distribution of rewards comes to complain, and the inhabitants
of the district pray to be defended, and an officer sent to inspect
the locality comes in and gives a report quite contrary to what
was said by the officer previously sent; and a spy, a prisoner,
and a general who has been on reconnaissance, all describe the
position of the enemy's army differently. People accustomed to
misunderstand or to forget these inevitable conditions of a commander
in chief's actions describe to us, for instance, the position
of the army at Fili and assume that the commander in chief could,
on the first of September, quite freely decide whether to abandon
Moscow or defend it; whereas, with the Russian army less than
four miles from Moscow, no such question existed. When had that
question been settled? At Drissa and at Smolensk and most palpably
of all on the twenty-fourth of August at Shevardino and on the
twenty-sixth at Borodino, and each day and hour and minute of
the retreat from Borodino to Fili.
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